Archive for the ‘Piecing’ Category

Why wonky borders occur and how to prevent them!

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

This has been bugging me for a while, and I’ve never seen it explained quite right (in my opinion), so here’s my attempt.

Wonky borders, or dog-ear borders, are what you get frequently at the end of a long-arm quilting process (see Figure B).  When you piece a quilt, and here in my very basic drawing I’ve just sewn a bunch of squares together (Figure A), all of the seams are locked together — except the ones on the outside!  As quilters, we do not tie off our seams when we piece, so those end-seams are somewhat loose.

Dog-ear Quilt effects

Figure A: The pieced Quilt. Figure B: What can happen on a quilt frame if the end seams are allowed to open

When you take the quilt on the longarm frame (here we are assuming there is no border), the top is generally forced to be square to the frame.  Then, as the quilter quilts and advances the quilt down the frame, if the quilter is not exceedingly careful to keep all the stitching lines straight, those edge “open” seams will give a bit, and start to stretch downward (Figure B).  If each seam stretches only slightly, say 1/32″ of an inch or so, but your quilt has small blocks (say 64 down a side), you could get 2″ of stretching before you’re done!  As a result, you get the dog-ear effect shown in the picture.  As a quilter, I use a 90-degree laser level to ensure that all of the seam lines are parallel as I quilt to prevent this from happening.

However, this is important to you as a piecer as well!  Let’s say you’ve finished off your quilt, and you’re ready to throw on those borders.  If you do like I used to do, and just whip those borders on, you may be in trouble.  I always had a tendency to “pull” on the quilt a bit to make sure it was feeding straight into the machine.  Guess what?  I just opened up all of those edge seams, and now I’ve just created Figure B again, but now with a border that your friendly longarm quilter cannot adjust for.   That’s why it is so important to pin that first set of borders to prevent this from happening.  You might even spray-starch your quilt ahead of time to make sure those seams are stable.  It’s even more important for borders, because you can tug on these seams on all four sides, resulting in “wonky borders”.   The longer edge of the quilt still tends to get more distorted, just because of the number of seams involved.

So, here you go — why you can get wonky borders and how to avoid them!

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Are you a threadaholic?

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

“Hi, my name’s Jeanne, and I’m a Threadaholic.”  (“Hi, Jeanne…..”)

I used to drool over fabric.  Different feels, colors, patterns, everything.  Thread was just something to put pieces together.  Ah, how the times have changed.

Now, I drool over thread.  Quilting thread.  Different weights, different colors, solid, variegated, polyester, cotton, silk — you name it, I like to (a) buy it, and (b) see how it interacts on a quilt.

Why do I care?  you ask.  Excellent question.  Two reasons:  First, I want to brag about my new thread storage device — check it out:

Thread caddy byt www.romwoodworking.com

Thread caddy by www.romwoodworking.com

I just got this at the Rocky Mountain Sew Expo — this is Made by Rom Woodworking.  This is fantastic — you can see all of your thread at a glance, and it looks good, too.  This is the half-barrel size — there is another unit twice as tall!

Second point:  I am totally convinced that the thread you use on a quilt is crucial.  Choosing the wrong thread will totally ruin a quilt, and the right thread can just melt in (if that’s what you want!) and add a fantastic texture.  For example, take this beautiful quilt based on a Thimbleberries pattern:

Thimbleberries Quilt

Because the quilt is a “sampler quilt” it was important to pick a thread that would be pleasing throughout all of the blocks and the borders.  We went through a lot of different threads, and eventually picked “Bulrushes” by Superior thread.  Check oThimbleberries Quilt Closeuput the closeup and see how nicely it merges with the quilt:

The point is that the thread you choose is just as important as every other variable.  Be wary of the quilter that only has a few thread colors to choose from.  I custom-order the thread for every quilt using the entire catalog of Superior quilting threads.  Oftentimes we need all few-hundred thread samples to figure out the right thread!  Don’t forget the backing thread — that’s important too.  I like to choose a thread that is complementary to the backing fabric — with the right tension settings, you can minimize “pokies”, or the top thread showing through to the back.

Summary:  Don’t forget the thread!  See your friendly neighborhood quilter (i.e.  threadaholic) for the right choices for your quilt!

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Posted in How-Tos, Piecing, Quilting | 2 Comments »

The Bane of Borders

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Wow — borders look pretty trivial, but they can be really tricky.  If you’re not careful with piecing your borders, your perfectly square quilt center can get dramatically out of square quickly. When sewing on a border that was cut cross-wise to the grain of fabric, it will stretch very easily (especially if you are trying to keep it a little “tight” for an accurate seam) and you will end up with wavy borders.  If your pieced quilt and your border do not feed in at equal rates to the machine, you will have an unsquare border.  The more borders you add, the worse it gets.  This has bad ramifications when you take your quilt to your friendly long-arm quilter, as the quilt frame is square — if your quilt is out of square, you will end up with tucks, folds, or inaccurate quilting.  For computer systems, that depend on square quilts, this can be death to an accurate border stitchout.

I know that the “traditional” method of adding borders is to measure the dimension of your quilt at three places, average the lengths, and then cut the border to that length and ease in.  I’ve tried it; it doesn’t work well for me.  No one else I know uses this method, either.  Here’s one easy way that will give you square borders with a minimum of hassle.

Cut your border fabric to slightly longer than the quilt edge you’re going to stitch it on to — say 2-3″.  Then lay the border fabric on the floor, right side up.  Center the quilt (right side down) on the border fabric so everything perfectly aligns.  Pin (yes, sorry, you do have to pin; I hate it too) the border to the quilt top, say every 6″ or so.  At the edges of the quilt, also pin the border to where it meets on the inside of the quilt (that is, you’ll have a u-shape of pins once you’re finished).  That way, when you pick up the quilt, the border won’t flop away from the quilt.  Stitch on the border.  Then, without removing those extra pins that you pinned the border to the inside of the quilt, take the quilt to the cutting board, verify that the quilt center is still square, and cut off the excess with a rotary blade and ruler.

Because you pinned the border, you don’t have excess fabric that will pull you off-square.  You don’t have to measure and ease-in a variation on length.  This has worked well for me — try it!

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